8. Dario
CHAPTER 8
Dario
I wouldn’t say I’m a natural gardener, but my yard isn’t big and I’m giving it my best go.
The sun is dipping in the sky. As I worked from home today, I was able to wrap up on time and get straight out here, making the most of the daylight I had left. I also gave Queenie a good walk during my lunch break, and I fed her at the usual time, so she’s taken care of. Mostly. She still keeps trying to ‘help’ me by digging holes wherever I’m weeding.
I’d be lying if I said I really minded. Seeing her coming out of her shell more and more as the days go by brings me immense joy. It’s like she’s remembering how to play, almost like being a puppy again.
Unfortunately, that means she keeps trying to start up a round of tug with my gardening gloves if I slip them off. I’ve got several of her toys scattered around me as I work on the dilapidated flowerbed, but nothing is as appealing as the gloves, apparently.
“Queenie, no!” I cry as she runs off with one of them for the third time. If she could cackle, I know in that moment, she would.
But that’s when my phone rings, just as I’m trying to scramble to my feet. I sigh and watch her scamper into the corner by the back door, slobbering all over my glove. It’s getting dark anyway, so I should probably call it a night. Hopefully I can ease the damn thing out of her mouth before she chews any holes in it.
I brush my hands and, seeing as it’s my mom, I quickly hit the green button to accept. “Mamá,” I say happily.
“Mijo,” she cries. “I just wanted to check in, but please tell me if I’m disturbing you with your friends or anything.”
I smile at the obvious attempt to pry into my social life and do my best to quash the sad pang in my chest. She means well, obviously. But it’s not like I’ve turned into a party animal in the month since I moved out.
“You’re not disturbing me at all,” I promise, tidying up my fork and trowel as well as the bucket of weeds I’ve pulled up. “I’ve been out in my yard. You’d be proud.”
“Oh, yes!” she squeals. “You remember what I said about mulch? You call me before you buy anything because I have spare, and I don’t want you putting the wrong thing down.”
I chuckle and throw the weeds into my trash. “I promise, Mamá. It’s just a little yard, though. Not like yours. I’ll be happy if I can just keep it tidy, that’s all.”
“Of course, of course,” she says quickly.
However, I doubt that’ll be the last I hear about mulching or composting or the right time to plant what flowers or what slug pellets to buy. I don’t really want to risk anything poisonous with Queenie around, but I guess I can worry about that in spring when we’ll both be more settled in the house and things will need planting and so on.
“How’s work?” she asks as I put the tools back into my small shed. “Are you eating enough? How’s Queenie?”
I laugh and shake my head, cataloguing all the questions. “Work is good. I feel like I’ve settled in now and don’t need to check what I’m doing with my supervisor every five minutes. My team went out for drinks on Friday night.”
“Oh, wonderful!” my mom enthuses.
I don’t have the heart to tell her it was a bit awkward, and I only stuck it out for two beers before making my excuses to head out. Actually, having Queenie was the perfect way to escape because several people made ‘aww’ noises when I said I had to get home to my dog, so I didn’t feel too guilty.
Perhaps over time I’ll get along better with them. They don’t seem terrible, after all.
Actually, it wasn’t really them so much as the bar we were at. I still find crowded places exhausting. It’s like I have to be on high alert and try and pay attention to every conversation, sudden movement, and loud noise, so I can never fully relax.
I can relax with Lochlan, though.
It’s a good thing I’m not on video with my mom, as I can feel myself blush just thinking about my super hot firefighter buddy. I wouldn’t want Mamá getting the wrong idea. So I hastily move the conversation along.
“And Queenie is good, although right now she’s stolen one of my gloves, so I’m trying to get it back.” I lock eyes with my bulldog and try and project an alpha vibe. “Queenie. Drop it.”
She shakes the glove before spitting it out and flopping onto her back, her tongue lolling and her tail wagging. I roll my eyes and rub her belly.
“Good girl,” I grumble, even though she isn’t really.
Oh, who am I kidding. Yes, she is.
“So the doggy training classes are paying off?” my mom asks.
“Yeah,” I say cheerfully. “But honestly, I think it’s more the socializing that’s doing her the most good. And she’s slowly realizing that she can trust me, and this is her forever home. At least, I’m her forever home.”
Who knows how long I’ll stay in this house, after all. If the last year has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is guaranteed, and anything can change on a dime.
But not Queenie. She’s mine now and I’m hers. We’re a little family of two. I’d never abandon her. She can rely on me if nothing else.
“How about food?” my mom barrels on. “Did you get the groceries I sent? You better be making the time to cook, mijo, and not getting takeout every night.”
Picking up the slightly soggy glove, I laugh and head inside, dropping both gloves by the back door and making my way to the living room where I can collapse on the sofa.
“I can’t afford takeout any night, Mamá, let alone every night,” I assure her.
She knows every penny I make is going into the house or into savings. If I keep my life frugal now, by next year, maybe I can relax knowing I have back-ups in place and a chunk of my mortgage interest paid.
“And you need to stop sending me deliveries,” I add. “I’m fine, I swear.”
She hums, and I don’t think I’m going to win that battle anytime soon. If it makes her feel better, I guess I don’t mind. But…I’m also aware that I really, really need to be standing on my own two feet again. There’s a fine line between letting someone fuss and be kind, and feeling like I’m helpless and can’t manage anything by myself.
“I made your red pozole recipe the other night,” I say to stop her from fretting too much. “It wasn’t quite as good as yours, but it was pretty close.”
“Oh, that makes me so happy,” she says warmly. “Did you add avocado?”
“Yes, and sour cream because my friend…I mean, uh, it was slightly too spicy.”
Shit. The silence at the end of the line tells me she didn’t miss my slip up. I didn’t want to tell her about Lochlan in case she gets the wrong idea. But sure enough…
“Friend?” she squeaks hopefully.
I chew my lip, a familiar fear crawling through my chest. It’s not my mom I’m wary of. She’s never been anything other than supportive, not even blinking an eyelid when I came out. But allowing myself to be vulnerable with anyone is still difficult.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, forcing myself to try and sound cheerful. “Just someone I met at the dog training class. Queenie loves this guy’s puppy, so we’ve been doing some extra work together. And he just happened to be here the other day around dinnertime, so…”
“Mijo, that’s wonderful,” she says with far too much excitement. “Dinner with a nice young man? Is he handsome? What does he do?”
“Mamá,” I say in a warning tone. “He’s just a friend. He…”
I should tell her he’s straight. That would be the easiest way to shut down any unreasonable expectations fast. But there’s a pathetic part of me that doesn’t want to admit it out loud and close that door for myself. Not just yet. I’ve been so unhappy for so long. I want to cling to a silly daydream for a little longer, even if it’s tragic and probably only going to hurt my own feelings in the long run.
“He’s a firefighter,” I say instead, wincing at my own cowardliness.
“Ohhhh, a firefighter,” she says breathlessly. I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cringe at my mother lusting after Lochlan when she has no idea what he looks like or even anything about him.
I mean, she’s not wrong. He’s got an insane body, a gorgeous smile, and sparkling eyes. More than that, though…he’s just so kind. And goofy. And fun. And earnest.
Urgh. My chest squeezes with desperate longing. Despite swearing off all men for good after Shane, it’s like my stupid heart skipped the memo. Logically, I know he’s off limits in a dozen different ways. But emotionally, physically, I can’t stop fantasizing about what it would feel like between those tree-trunk thighs. What his pretty pink lips would taste like. What?—
“Send me a picture of him,” my mom interrupts my spiraling thoughts. She giggles through the phone and I sigh.
“I don’t have any,” I say truthfully.
“Then what’s his name?” she asks. “I’ll find him on the Instagram or the TikToks.”
“Ma- má,” I beg, willing her to behave. “You’re not allowed to stalk my friend, okay? He’s a nice guy, but he’s just a friend, I swear. We talk about trimming claws and homemade dog treat recipes and, well, he likes sci-fi as well, so I showed him my collection.” That’s not quite how it happened, of course, but my mom doesn’t need to know that.
I expect her to tease me more, but her voice softens. “He sounds like a nice boy.”
“He is,” I assure her.
“Oh!” she cries, excitable again. “If he’s a special friend, you should bring him home for Thanksgiving.”
I scoff and shake my head, rocking off the sofa and heading back to the kitchen. I think I need a glass of wine to go with dinner after this conversation. “I’m sure he’s got his own family to spend the holiday with, Mamá.”
“You don’t know that,” she says scornfully. “You be polite and ask him, okay? You know we always welcome everyone in our home. Well…almost everyone,” she adds darkly.
I definitely don’t want to go down that road again right now. She tried so hard to get along with Shane, but he always had this difficult air about him when we visited. I told myself he was just a bit awkward, but the truth is, we’d leave and then he’d spend the entire trip back to Phoenix complaining about my family. He’d frame it in a way that he was just worried about me and how they treated me. Stupidly, I listened to him.
I let him drive a wedge between us.
Not anymore, though. I still don’t want to hash over all that again, however. So I rally and force myself to smile, even if my mom can’t see it.
“Of course I’ll check if Lochlan has somewhere to spend Thanksgiving. But he might even be working. Fires don’t stop for the holidays, you know.”
“Lochlan?” she repeats, and I curse myself, jamming the phone between my shoulder and ear so I can open a bottle of red. “That’s a pretty name,” she comments.
“Hmm,” I respond, knowing full well she’s probably already using her Google-Foo to search the internet for a Redwood Bay firefighter called Lochlan. It’s an unusual name, so she most likely won’t even need his surname.
Honestly, it probably won’t take her long to find him, and perhaps I should stop resisting the inevitable. Lochlan is special to me. Even if it’s in a purely platonic way. He’s done so much to restore my confidence and make me feel at home here in town.
“I’ll ask him, Mamá,” I promise softly. “You’re right. I’d hate for him to be alone over the holidays.”
I know that she just really, really wants me to be happy. After everything I went through, in her mind the best thing for me would be to meet a ‘lovely, handsome man,’ as she says frequently, bless her. She doesn’t understand that for me, the best thing is to thrive on my own, at least for the time being.
So I’m not convinced she’s really hearing me when I say he’s just a friend. If I told her he was straight she might back down, but as I’m talking to her in that moment, I realize that’s only an assumption on my part. We’ve never discussed our orientations, so who knows? Perhaps I’m wrong.
That’s almost certainly wishful thinking. But if it enables me to cling to the Schrodinger’s cat of Lochlan’s sexuality and my pathetic crush for a little longer, I don’t have the strength to resist.
However, she does have a point. I would genuinely hate for him to be alone over Thanksgiving or at any time. Because someone like him should never be lonely. His family is here in town and he’s close with his firefighter buddies, so I’m sure he absolutely does not need my help.
It can’t hurt to ask, though, right?
And, I might be twenty-eight, but there’s still a part of me that can’t disappoint my mom. If she’s telling me I have to do this, for her as much as me, then it gives me an excuse to do something silly. I’m sure Lochlan and I will laugh about it when I bring it up.
So that’s what I decide to do. I’ll honor my word and make the offer, but with an eye roll and a fond ‘Moms, am I right?’ attitude.
We chat a little more before we both need to make food, so I tell her I love her and end the call. As I prepare some chicken, I sip my wine and feel the warmth spreading through me. Lochlan has been so kind to me. It’ll actually be nice to offer him something in return. Installing the puppy cams at the firehouse and his apartment doesn’t count. That’s like regular work for me. Inviting him to San Diego might be a token gesture of sorts, but it’ll still be from the heart.
Because as the wine thrums through my veins, I can admit to myself that in an alternate reality, I’d love nothing more than to bring Lochlan home to meet my family as my boyfriend. For a few hours, I let my imagination take the wheel as I picture introducing him to my abuelas, parents, cousins, tias and tios. How he’d charm the pants off them but never make me feel like I’d been forgotten about.
I bet Lochlan Bell would make a great boyfriend. I try not to be jealous of whichever lucky girl gets to find that out for herself.
For now, what’s the harm in dreaming?